Posted on 10/06/2005 5:04:43 AM PDT by gobucks
University of Idaho President Tim White has entered the debate pitting Charles Darwin's theories of life against religious-based alternatives by forbidding anything other than evolution from being taught in the Moscow school's life, earth and physical science classes.
White's edict came as a U of I biologist, Scott Minnich, a supporter of the "intelligent design" theory, was set to testify in a Pennsylvania lawsuit brought by eight families trying to have this theory, branded as a new form of creationism, dropped from a school district's biology curriculum. Minnich was asked to testify on behalf of the district.
Hours after White's letter reached students, staff and faculty on Tuesday, the Discovery Institute, a Seattle public policy group that funds research into intelligent design, blasted the order as an unconstitutional assault on academic freedom and free speech.
White said in his letter that teachings of views that differ from evolution may occur in religion, philosophy or similar courses.
Intelligent design is the belief that Darwin's mechanism of natural selection inadequately explains the origins of different life forms. It argues that natural selection fails to fully explain how extremely varied and complex life forms emerged during the past 600 million years. It concludes that guidance from some external intelligence that many interpret as God must be involved.
With Idaho now in the debate, disputes over evolution are unfolding in at least 19 states. In August, President Bush weighed in, saying he thought people should be taught about different ideas — including intelligent design.
Officials at the National Center for Science Education say White is likely the first U.S. university president to come out with an official position. The center advocates against incorporating theories such as intelligent design into science curricula on grounds they introduce religion into the subject matter.
"Departments have issued statements, and scientific groups have issued statements," said Glenn Branch, the Oakland, Calif.-based center's deputy director. "But I can't think of a university president who's issued a statement like this."
White wrote that national media attention on the issue prompted the letter.
"This (evolution) is the only curriculum that is appropriate to be taught in our biophysical sciences," he wrote. "Teaching of views that differ from evolution may occur in faculty-approved curricula in religion, sociology, philosophy, political science or similar courses. However, teaching of such views is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses."
Harold Gibson, a school spokesman, said the views of Minnich, a tenured professor in the school's College of Agriculture, didn't prompt the letter.
Rather, White was staking out a position on an issue that's emerged as a successor to "creationism" after that Biblical explanation was barred from the nation's schoolhouses in 1987 by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Minnich didn't return Associated Press calls for comment.
But members of the Discovery Institute — founded in 1990 by Bruce Chapman, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Organizations in Vienna under President Reagan — lambasted White's edict as an intrusion into the academic freedom of Idaho professors.
John West, the associate director of the institute's Center for Science and Culture, said White's move restricting science curricula to discussions of evolution broadly restricts teaching anything that contradicts Darwin's ideas on the role of mutation and natural selection in the development of life — even by scientists not advocating intelligent design.
In addition, limiting classes where evolution alternatives can be discussed violates free speech protections, he said.
"He (White) is saying, 'If you're a teacher in philosophy, we may allow you to do this. But in science, it just doesn't cut it,' West said. "In any other area, this would be preposterous."
White's letter came just a week before Eugenie C. Scott, an activist who's fought to segregate creationism and intelligent design from science classes, is due to speak at the University of Idaho on Oct. 12.
Scott said the school's science faculty, who invited her, haven't explicitly mentioned Minnich as motivation for bringing her for a lecture titled "Why Scientists Reject Intelligent Design."
Still, "the elephant in the living room is: there is a proponent of intelligent design on the faculty of the University of Idaho," said Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education. "Biologists across the country have examined intelligent design as a scientific model, and found it seriously lacking."
You just don't get it.
What happened can never be determined with any accuracy so it is all a waste of time (something universities do very well). Yet humanists cannot admit that science cannot provide answers to everything. They can never admit, for example, that any cause of evolutionary change is unknown or unknowable. A *real* scientist would not have this problem.
How can creationists exists before Darwin? Also, you need to learn what science is before making such a statement. Evolution falls under the purvey of modern science. ID and creationism do not. Do you really have to go back to how science was done centuries ago to find support? Why not look at what science is and does today? You support my earlier statement. Science has to be denigrated to fit ID.
Only people with things to hide behave the way evolutionists do.
True, but nonetheless it's one of those time wasters with serious consequences. Naziism and communism were offshoots of evolution.
"University of Idaho President Tim White has entered the debate pitting Charles Darwin's theories of life against religious-based alternatives by forbidding anything other than evolution from being taught in the Moscow school's life, earth and physical science classes."A couple of weeks ago I heard someone say on NPR (of all places) that some day evolutionists such as this will be viewed the way we view doctrinaire Marxists today.
Cordially,
Do you know something that philosophers of science don't know?
Cordially,
Since science can has an answer for everything, tell me: what is life?
Your bias is beginning to show.
Not to mention how that there thermos knows hot from cold.
"Since science can has an answer for everything, tell me: what is life?"
I didn't say science can answer everything. Please reread what I said.
" I think we can safely conclude that Hitler had no fear of the creator."
Why should he? He thought he was doing (his version of) God's work. He wasn't an atheist.
Chapter 3
The Behavior of Germany Considered from an Evolutionary Point of View in 1942
VISITORS TO GERMANY IN 1934 FOUND AN emotional storm sweeping through masses of the people, particularly the more educated. The movement had much in common with a religious revival. The preacher in this case was Adolf Hitler; his doctrine was, and is, tribalism; he had stirred in the emotional depths of the German people those long-dormant tribal feelings which find release and relief in mutual service; men and women who had been leading selfish lives or were drifting aimlessly were given a new purpose in life: service to their country the Third Reich. It is worth noting that Hitler uses a double designation for his tribal doctrine National Socialism: Socialism standing for the good side of the tribal spirit (that which works within the Reich); aud Nationalism for the ethically vicious part, which dominates policy at and outside the German frontiers.
The leader of Germany is an evolutionist not only in theory, but, as millions know to their cost, in the rigor of its practice. For him the national "front" of Europe is also the evolutionary "front"; he regards himself, and is regarded, as the incarnation of the will of Germany, the purpose of that will being to guide the evolutionary destiny of its people.
What is your dataset? What are your methods?
Science relies on observation to establish data (facts), then through hypotheses and testing (falsifying) of hypotheses constructs a theoretical framework to explain the dataset.
CS/ID has the final answer already--God did it--so it does not need a dataset or any of the other methods normal to science.
If this is not the case, please enlighten me: What is your dataset? What are your methods?
You are assuming what you are trying to prove. Your statement, being a philosophical statement about science, not a statement of science is self-refuting because it is not itself derived from the scientific method (by your own definition of "science"). It is therefore inconsistent with its own terms. Positivism offers no metaphysically neutral ground for disqualifying theories that invoke nonnaturalistic events—such as instances of agency or intelligent design.
Cordially,
Hitler was a creationist. Sorry, try again.
""Human culture and civilization on this continent are inseparably bound up with the presence of the Aryan. If he dies out or declines, the dark veils of an age without culture will again descend on this globe. The undermining of the existence of human culture by the destruction of its bearer seems in the eyes of a folkish philosophy the most execrable crime. Anyone who dares to lay hands on the highest image of the Lord commits sacrilege against the benevolent Creator of this miracle and contributes to the expulsion from paradise."
" It is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator if His most gifted beings by the hundreds and hundreds of thousands are allowed to degenerate in the present proletarian morass, while Hottentots and Zulu Kaffirs are trained for intellectual professions."
"What we must fight for is to safeguard the existence and reproductionof our race and our people, the sustenance of our children and the purityof our blood, the freedom and independence of the fatherland, so that ourpeople may mature for the fulfillment of the mission allotted it by the Creator of the universe."
The goal of the Nazis is to "...finally to put an end to the constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created."
All quotes from Mein Kampf.
My point is that Bacon believed in limiting the science to essentially experiments that could be done in a lab. He didn't take into consideration that the scientific method does extend beyond the lab and beyond to the immediately observable. Historical sciences are just as valid. They make testable predictions. Astronomy, cosmology, geology and paleontology all fit this description.
Also, my original point to Blessed was that to teach ID as science means you have to harmfully warp the meaning of science. Blessed called that fiction. But science will have to change to incorporate the supernatural for ID to fit. Or Science will have to change so any hand-waving arguement or idea can have the same footing as those developed from observation. That affects all branches of science.
I never read so much gobbledygook in my life.
I've been a practicing scientist for 40 years and never met a scientist who presumed that science did not have precisely the limitations I presented. It has nothing to do with philosophy but the clear difference between empirical observation and mere conjecture.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.